Tate Modern: Red Star Over Russia (19.11.2017)

Many, if not all Western exhibitions purporting to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Russian October Revolution, are merely excuses for the prevailing bourgeois, capitalist system to continue to attack and denigrate the reputation of the Soviet Union, as a means to discredit Marxist-Leninism, and influence the working class away from positively relating to Soviet (Bolshevik) Socialism. It is perhaps ironic that the Tate Modern, a complex of art galleries constructed within an old (and huge) Central London factory, should host such a poorly conceived, badly organised and thoroughly ‘revisionist’ exhibition designed to convey not only the prevailing bourgeois negative view of the Soviet Union, but compounds this error by dedicating an entire room to the criminal Leon Trotsky! As the bourgeoisie has a tendency to ‘fetishize’ Trotsky, this exhibition focuses upon the removal of his image from all Soviet documentation, and completely ignores Trotsky’s open collaboration fascist Italy, fascist Spain, fascist Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany throughout the 1930s! Furthermore, this exhibition (based upon the collection of Soviet propaganda posters formerly owned by the British Trotskyite David King), has a number of historical facts incorrect. The 1905 Revolution had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks, and the February Revolution of 1917 also had nothing to do with Lenin. Stalin died in 1953 and not 1955, and Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and not 1927! Lenin is treated as a potential criminal, whilst Stalin is treated as an actual criminal. Lenin disagreed with Trotsky but thought that he could be reformed through labour – but Trotsky always remained a bourgeois leftist and self-serving careerist. Whilst dedicating the last 11 years of his life to trying to destroy Lenin’s masterpiece creation of the Soviet Union – the Tate Modern commentary laughingly insists that Trotsky was Lenin’s greatest supporter! I have photographed a number of interesting Soviet posters because their original purpose was to express an entirely ‘new’ and ‘proletariat’ way of viewing the world, but I reject the Trotskyite viewpoints of David King, and the ludicrous bourgeois interpretation of events as conveyed by the Tate Modern. Nothing positive is said about the Soviet Union, and just as Trotsky’s dalliance with world fascism is ignored, so too is the Soviet Sacrifice in its war with, and subsequent victory over Nazi Germany (where the USSR lost between 27-40 million men, women and children killed and wounded). David King erroneously makes much of police photographs of suspected and/or convicted criminals which he gathered from the USSR, but the fact remains that if capitalism ever collapsed in the West, there would be millions of similar photographs ‘liberated’ from the bourgeois police archives!

A dramatic visual history of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1905 to the death of Stalin – seen through the eyes of artists, designers and photographers

2017 marks the centenary of the October Revolution. Rebellion brought hope, chaos, heroism and tragedy as the Russian Empire became the Soviet Union, endured revolutions, civil war, famine, dictatorship and Nazi invasion. A new visual culture arose and transformed the fabric of everyday life.

The core of this exhibition comes from the extraordinary collection of photographer and graphic designer David King (1943–2016). He started his collection of over 250,000 items relating to this period while working for The Sunday Times Magazine in the 1970s. The collection was acquired by Tate in 2016.

This show is an opportunity to see the rare propaganda posters, prints and photographs collected by King – some bearing traces of state censorship. Including work by El Lissitzky, Gustav Klutsis, Dmitri Moor, Aleksandr Deineka, Nina Vatolina and Yevgeny Khaldei, it is a thrilling journey through a momentous period in world history.

Right

Photographer Unknown, Preparing for May Day in the Railway Workers’ Club 1929. Purchased 2016. The David King Collection at Tate